


Rain or Shine

by faint_planet



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: AU, Chloé is Chat Noir, Doesn't follow S2, Gen, How Do I Tag, Sabrina is Ladybug, chloe needs to learn how to be a nice human being, sabrina needs a big hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-06-14 14:00:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15390285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faint_planet/pseuds/faint_planet
Summary: Sabrina nearly flinched when she saw there was a person already on the roof. A girl with bright blond hair, maybe about her age.Taking in the cat costume, the fake cat ears flicking back and forth, and the blue sclera, Sabrina came to the conclusion that it was the work of magic, probably the same one that had constructed her suit. This person could only be the other miraculous holder that Tikki had told her about.“Hi,” Sabrina blurted out. “I’m… Ladybug.”(Or, in which Marinette wakes up on time for once and AU takes the wheel.)





	1. Chapter 1

Marinette buried her head further under her blanket, trying to block out the incessant ringing of her phone’s alarm. A few more minutes of sleep wasn’t enough to make her late, right?

But it was the first day of school. She was ready to get back into a steady routine, see her classmates for the first time in months, and maybe make new friends. She’d heard there were even going to be a couple people switching into her grade this year. 

Reluctantly, Marinette rolled out of bed and turned off her alarm. Walking downstairs in pink pyjamas, she saw her mother waiting for her with breakfast. 

“Good morning,” said Sabine Dupain-Cheng. “Up early for your first day back at school?”

“You always say the early bird catches the worm,” Marinette replied glumly, not at all feeling like the lucky bird in question. “I’ll bet you anything Chloé will be in my class again this year.”

“Four years in row? Is that possible?”

“Definitely. Lucky me,” said Marinette sarcastically, pouring herself some cereal. Through all her years of collége, Chloé had been a constant presence, tormenting her at every opportunity. 

“Don’t say that. It’s the start of a new year. I’m sure everything will be just fine.”

Marinette nodded and absentmindedly put down a container of cocoa powder, setting off a chain reaction. An orange was knocked out of a bowl of fruit and rolled into her cereal box, nearly tipping it over. Marinette barely managed to grab hold of the box before it fell. 

If only she wasn’t so clumsy. This school year was already not going as well as she’d hoped.

Glancing at the clock, Marinette shoved spoonfuls of cereal into her mouth and went back up to her room to get ready. The outfit she had planned for today was draped over the back of her desk chair. She changed, brushed her teeth, and raced back in record time. She was actually running early. 

“Bye, Mom,” Marinette said, kissing her mother on the cheek.

Sabine smiled. “Have a great day at school and don’t forget to bring the macarons to class. Your father should have the box down in the shop.”’

“I won’t forget,” Marinette called, halfway to the ground floor. She picked up the box of mint green macarons from her dad, blushing when he mentioned the success of the logo she designed. 

With a hug goodbye, she left the bakery and crossed the street to her school. When she sat down in her seat, she almost laughed; hardly anyone was there yet. 

Maybe this year would bring an end to her habit of constantly being late. 

.  
.  
.

Two streets away, an annoyed Chloé Bourgeois sat in a sleek Mercedes. Her foot tapped impatiently to the beat of the XY song playing on the radio. 

She was going to be late! And on the very first day! Chloé knew that being fashionably late was an art form in itself, but first impressions were even more important. 

“Could you possibly be going any slower?” She questioned loudly, leaning towards the driver’s seat. In the rearview mirror, she saw her chauffeur start to open his mouth, probably to spew out excuses. “Never mind,” she said. “Don’t answer that.”

She checked her phone. Sabrina had texted that she’d already arrived at school. Chloé sent a text back. 

_Don’t go inside before I get there._

Chloé peered out the tinted window. They were stuck behind a never-ending line of cars stopped at a red light. She could see the blue roof of Collège Françoise Dupont from here. She wasn’t that far away from school. 

“Whatever,” she said with a dramatic sigh. “I’ll just walk. Daddy will be hearing about your incompetence.”

The chauffeur gaping like a dying fish was the last thing she saw before slamming the car door shut and stepping onto the sidewalk. 

“These shoes really weren’t meant for walking,” Chloé grumbled, starting to head in the direction of her school. Maybe later she would buy a couple pairs of shoes to make up for how worn her soles were going to be. She wanted to get to school on time, and if this was the only way, so be it. Adrikins was going to be in her class this year and she didn’t want her seat next to him to get taken. 

As his best and only friend, Chloé had the right to reserve the seat besides Adrien where she could spend the year trying to gain his affections. 

She turned the corner and the front of her school was in view, Sabrina waiting on the steps. Chloé had only seen Sabrina a handful of times over the summer, preferring to spend her time by herself or with Adrien instead. Sabrina’s sense of fashion was as abysmal as Chloé remembered. 

Chloé hastened her steps, wanting to be in class before the bell rang, when she bumped into someone and fell. She caught herself right before her head would’ve smacked against the pavement, but her shoulder bag wasn’t so lucky. Its contents were strewn all over the ground, getting dirtier with every passing second. Her phone (the screen better not be shattered), her sunglasses, even her expensive tube of mascara. 

“Chloé!” Sabrina cried out, rushing over. “Ohmygosh, are you okay?”

Chloé wasn’t listening. She sat up and glared at the person that made her fall. If he could even be called that. He was more like a troll than a person–wrinkly, short, and hunched over. 

To top it all off, he wore a garish, firetruck-red Hawaiian shirt. Tourist alert! Didn’t he know the last time those were in, it was the 1930s? Come to think of it, he looked so old, he probably was alive to buy it in the 30’s. 

Standing up, she clenched her fists, scraped palms stinging. “Watch where you’re going, grandpa! There are other people besides you walking on the sidewalk!”

“I’m sorry, mademoiselle,” the old man said, pathetically attempting to get himself off the ground. 

“You’d better be sorry. If only my daddy was able to ban people like you from the streets. Then the world would be a better place.”

On any other day, she would have spent more time voicing her complaints, but the old guy was not worth her time and she had class to get to. With a hmmph, Chloé started walking away from him and towards the door. 

Sabrina, who had been gathering Chloé’s scattered belongings, scrambled to her feet and turned to the old man. “I am so, so sorry,” she said. “Here, let me help you up.”

For a split-second Sabrina hesitated. She couldn’t help the old man while holding Chloé’s shoulder bag, and she didn’t want to put the bag on the ground and incur Choé’s wrath. One option left, she carefully put the chain strap over her own shoulder. Chloé would be angry, but she could just… conveniently… not mention it? Yeah. She’d only bring it up if Chloé did first.

She handed the elderly man his cane and let him use her shoulder for support. “Are you okay? Do you need help walking home?” Sabrina asked. Remembering that older people have more delicate bones, she tacked on another question. “Do you think you need an ambulance?”

The old man shook his head. “Thank you, young lady. No need to worry about me. Nothing wounded but my pride.” 

“Are you sure?” Sabrina asked, uncertain. It had looked like a pretty bad fall.

“I’m sure. You should get to class, no? Wouldn’t want to miss the first day of school.”

“How do–”

The ringing of the school bell interrupted her mid-sentence. Eyes wide, Sabrina apologized to the man again and scampered up the steps.

Chloé was nowhere to be seen. She must have gone inside already. That was good. Sabrina would hate for her only friend to be late on her account. 

Dashing through the building, Sabrina passed by her classroom from last year and a darted up a flight of stairs. She halted to a stop when she saw Chloé sitting at a desk in an unfamiliar room. Chloé was glancing across the aisle to an empty seat on her left wearing an annoyed expression. The hairs that had been untucked in her fall were pulled back into a perfect blond ponytail. 

Sabrina used to wish that her hair was long enough to style like that. She wasn’t a fashion expert by any means, so on a day she was feeling particularly brave, she asked Chloé for her input. Chloé burst out laughing, saying that it was a miracle that her ginger hair only looked half bad cut at shoulder-length. Gratefulness had quickly pushed disappointment out of the way. Imagine what a disaster it would have been if she hadn’t gotten Chloé’s advice!

Sabrina tore her eyes away from Chloé’s hair, checking the room number to confirm that this is was going to be her homeroom for the year. She reached for the door handle but paused when she realized something. She still had the gold chain of Chloe’s shoulder bag draped over her shoulder. 

As if it was on fire, Sabrina shed the bag, glancing through the window to make sure Chloé hadn’t seen. Thankfully, Chloé was facing the teacher. 

Worries abated, Sabrina burst in through the door. She darted across the classroom to the seat next to Chloé with her head down, face flushed. She tried to be as silent as possible as to not disturb the class. 

The teacher, in the middle of taking attendance, gave her a pointed look. To Sabrina’s relief, the teacher didn’t say anything, her blue eyes flicking back to the list of names. 

“Juleka Couffaine,” the teacher called out. 

From the back of the classroom, a girl answered from behind a screen of dyed hair. “Present.”

Good. Her teacher was only up to “C” in alphabetical order of last names. She hadn’t missed her name getting called. 

At last, Sabrina gave the shoulder bag to Chloé, sliding it across the desk, but Chloé pushed it back. Sabrina tilted her head to the side, confused. 

“Just… just hold it for the rest of the day. You can wear it for all I care,” Chloé whispered urgently. 

Sabrina started to reply, but the teacher called her name. 

“Sabrina Raincomprix?”

“Present,” Sabrina squeaked.

Taking advantage of Sabrina’s divided attention, Chloé made a show of turning away from Sabrina to to face the teacher. Sabrina had been friends with Chloé long enough to know what that meant. The conversation was officially Over. 

The rest of the first half of the school day school passed by in a blur. Introductions—there was one new student, two if you include the absent Adrien Agreste—and review of course syllabus, and then classes started. 

After a period of learning French literature in the homeroom classroom, the class was split up. Half the students went to gym and the rest, including Chloé and Sabrina, were told by Mme. Bustier to spend their free period in the library. 

Chloé, disgusted at the idea of willingly spending time in a library, had sashayed off to the bathroom with Sabrina in tow. 

Once in the girls’ restroom, Chloé gravitated towards the mirror like a magnet.

“Did that old guy mess up my eyeshadow?” Chloé asked, craning her neck to see her face in the mirror. “I ran to the bathroom to fix my hair before class started, but I totally didn’t have time to check my makeup for more than a minute. I can’t even believe how careless people can be.”

Chloé’s blue eyeshadow stood out against her skin, accenting the shape of her eyes. “No, no, it definitely looks as good as it did before. The fall didn’t really mess it up. And, um, I think you shouldn’t blame—” she stopped for a second before changing her approach, “the old man shouldn’t be blamed for accidentally bumping into you.”

“It was his fault,” Chloé said matter-of-factly. “At least Adrien wasn’t here to see me in this state. Thank God for small mercies.” 

“Oh right. I meant to ask you if you knew why Adrien wasn’t here. With everything you’ve been saying about him, I was looking forward to meeting him.” 

And Sabrina had heard a lot about the very famous Adrien Agreste, son of Gabriel Agreste, and model for his father’s clothing line. Over the summer—or at least the few times she saw Chloé over the summer—Chloé would talk nonstop about how her Adrikins, who was homeschooled, was going to go to their school. Chloé was very happy about the turn of events, and maybe even a little smug. 

Chloé frowned, though her eyes were still glued to her reflection “I don’t know. Maybe his dad remembered about the stick up his butt. He’s really strict, you know. Adrien’s dad may not have known about the whole Adrien-actually-going-to-school-like-a-normal-kid thing. I’ll text him to ask later. If I asked him now, I’d just sound needy.” 

Sabrina shifted her weight from one foot to the other, unsure how to respond. Chloé seemed preoccupied with reapplying her lip gloss, so Sabrina risked a glance in the mirror. 

Blue-green eyes stared back at her from behind a large pair of glasses. She’d worn an argyle vest today, thinking it would be the perfect outfit to start the school year off on, but now she wasn’t so sure. Against the slate gray stall doors, Sabrina looked washed out. The blues and purples of her vest blended into the walls and into each other. Even her orange hair managed to look sickly in the lighting. She should have consulted Chloé before choosing an outfit. Although, thinking back, Sabrina hadn’t done anything for Chloé lately. Chloé wouldn't've helped her even if she asked. She should think of ways to help Chloé. Maybe by doing that end of term paper that Mme. Bustier mentioned for her?

Sabrina was saved from further conversation by a loud thumping noise outside that caught both girls’ attention. 

Chloé shrieked. “What was that?” 

“I’m not sure. I don’t know what could even cause a noise like that.”

They opened the bathroom door to find the hallway full of students rushing to the exit. Chloé and Sabrina backed up against the hallway wall, trying not to get trampled. 

“What’s going on?” Chloe asked. “I thought this was a school, not a barn.”

“Hey,” she yelled into the stampede. “I’m asking you.” Unsatisfied with a lack of response, Chloé stuck her foot out into the rush of people. It took a few seconds, but someone soon tripped over her outstretched leg. 

A boy, maybe a year older than them, lay flat on the floor, dazed. While he was picking himself up, Chloé interrogated him. 

“Like, what’s up with all the running? Don’t you know gym class is that way?” Chloé pointed in the opposite direction. 

The boy’s voice shook as he answered. “There’s a monster! We gotta run! I was in the library and saw it on the security cameras, y’know those screens above the librarian’s desk? It’s big, made of rock, and smashing everything.” Standing up, he rejoined the stream of people heading to the door. “I’d run too if I were you.”

“Chloé, we should get out of here if everyone’s so worried about this,” Sabrina said. 

Despite the circumstances, Chloé was on the verge of laughing. “A monster. That’s what everyone’s worried about? It’s probably just—” a giggle escaped, “it’s probably just M. Damocles.”

Sabrina barely held herself back from telling Chloé not to speak meanly about their teachers, much less their principal. She didn’t want Chloé to get mad at her. “Either way, something’s going on and it sounds dangerous.” Sabrina’s point was accented by another thud that made the hallway lights flicker. “We should go.”

“Fine. But if it turns out to be nothing, I’ll be sure Daddy makes a call to the school administration”

The girls followed everyone else out the front entrance. Hearing their principal’s voice, they stopped on the outskirts of a large circle of cracked pavement. 

M. Damocles was shouting from his 2nd-story office window, which was now a gaping hole in the front of the school. “Uh, early dismissal! Students and teachers, please return to your homes until the, uh, situation is under control.”

Sabrina, who started jogging in the direction of her apartment, was pulled back by Chloé. 

“Wait! Give me my bag back.”

Sabrina blinked, confused, before remembering the shoulder bag sitting across her body. She took it off and handed it to Chloé. “You heard M. Damocles, we should go home. The hotel isn’t far away, right? You can get there pretty fast if you hurry, and I can text you if anything happens.”

“Sure, yeah.” Chloé started walking in the direction of the hotel, Le Grand Paris, her home. She took out her phone, ready to call her chauffer and ask him to drive her over. She didn’t want to have to walk for a second time today. As an afterthought, she called out to Sabrina—“Bye, see ya,”—but Sabrina was already gone. 

.  
.  
.

Chloé entered her room with a sigh. Of frustration or exhaustion—she couldn’t tell. She walked straight onto her balcony, the clacking of her short heel on marble dulling when she stepped onto the wood floor of the balcony. Overlooking the street, the empty sidewalks was the first thing she noticed.

Chloé frowned. As far back as she could remember, she’d always been able to go out to her balcony to relax, listen bustle of busy citizens. Sometimes songs would float up to her balcony from restaurants along with the chatter of shoppers looking in store windows, pedestrians crossing the street, and families picnicking in the park. When she was very young, she’d pretend to be a princess watching over her loyal citizens from her castle.

Right now, the streets were devoid of the usual noise. A police car’s wailing siren shattered the eerie silence only to get quieter and quieter as the car slowly got farther and farther away. 

There was definitely something wrong.

Walking back inside, Chloé sat on her pink couch and switched on her flat screen TV to the news. Anything that was happening would be talked about there.

The TV blinked to life, and her dad appeared on screen. He was making announcements, telling Parisians to stay in their home until it was safe. In the back of Chloé’s mind, worry started creeping in. Her dad was busy telling everyone else to be safe, yet he was not heeding his own orders. Instead of being at City Hall, he should be at his home too. 

The program proving to be more upsetting than she was willing to admit, Chloé shut off the TV and turned to look back outside. Cloudless blue stretched out as far as the eye could see. How did such a nice day turn into such a worrying one? 

Whatever. It didn’t matter. As long as it stayed far, far away from her.

Walking to her closet, she examined the soles of her shoes, now off her feet and in her hands. Chloé grimaced. The bottoms of her shoes were littered with small scratches. She set them down gently. Once this whole mess was over, she’d finally have a chance to go shopping. 

Her flats now in her closet, she took off her shoulder bag and hurled it at the pillows on her bed. 

She walks into homeroom the morning of the first day of school to find that annoyance of a girl, Marinette Dupain-Cheng, with almost the same bag. Sure, the designs were different and Chloé was positive hers costed at least two hundred dollars more, but Dupain-Cheng had the audacity to steal her style. To make things worse, she didn’t think Dupain-Cheng was going to retire her bag anytime soon, if the fit she threw about her seat was any indication. What didn’t she get? New year, new seats, plus, she needed to sit next to Adrien.

Speaking of Adrien, Chloé remembered she was planning on texting him. She unzipped her bag to take out her phone, only to find something inside that most certainly wasn’t there when she packed the bag that morning.

She withdrew a black hexagon box, an ornate design in red on the lid. What was this doing here? The only person other than her that touched the bag all day was Sabrina. That raised the question of why Sabrina had snuck a weird box into her bag. 

Chloé threw open the lid, eager to find out exactly what Sabrina had hidden in her purse. 

There was a flash of something shiny inside, but she soon had to look away because of the blinding green light emerging from the box. 

After a few moments, the green sphere of light dissipated, leaving a thing the size of a mouse floating in midair.

What in the name of—v 

“Hi.”

It spoke. The flying animal(?) spoke. In a monotone, tired-sounding voice. 

“Wasn’t told about you. Huh. Weird. Got anything to eat?"

Chloé screamed. “Talking bat! Jean-Antoine, call the exterminators!” 

Alarmed, the flying bat tried to get her to be quieter. “Woah, woah, kid! Calm down! Other people can’t know about me.”

Chloé hid behind a chair and hollered for her butler again. “Jean-whatever-your-name-is, help!”

Loud knocking sounded at her door. “Mademoiselle Bourgeois, are you okay?” Her butler had come at last.

“Obviously not,” Chloé yelled.

Jean-something flung open the door, flyswatter in hand. He took in the sight of Chloé crouched behind a chair. “What’s the problem?”

“Some sort of bat was in my room!” Chloé pointed to the talking bat-thing, only to find he had disappeared. She gaped. “But—but it was right here!”

Finding nothing after extensive searching, Chloé’s butler turned to her with a kind smile. “Ah, I see what’s happening. You’re worried because of the situation outside. Have no fear, your father, will be back shortly. The police are dealing with the danger as we speak.”

“That’s not… there was something there!” Chloé insisted.

“Stress can have odd effects on people. It’s normal at this age to be stressed sometimes, especially—”

“I get it. You can leave now,” Chloé said, slamming the door behind him. Only after did she realize that she’d just trapped herself in a room with the thing.

Slightly more dignified, Chloé stifled her yelp of surprise as the thing flew out of a vase of roses, the sound catching in her throat instead. Seeing as calling for help didn’t work, Chloé tried confronting it. “What are you? Why can you talk?”

“The name’s Plagg. I’m a kwami, I grant powers. And I’m hungry.” It flew back to the roses and took a bite of one. “Not food,” it said. “What’s edible in this century?”

“Powers?” Chloé asked. “Yeah right. You’re probably a mutated bird or, or a rat that got caught in a lab experiment.”

The kwami–Plagg–crossed its arms. “I’m not saying nothing until you bring me food.”

“I’m not bringing you food! You broke into my house and now you’re demanding food?”

“Nah nah nah nah nah,” Plagg sang. “Can’t hear you.” It zoomed all over Chloé’s room, trying to take bites out of various objects. 

A few moments later, Chloé heard clattering coming from her bathroom. Some of her hair care products were on the floor and the kwami was hovering next to the sink, spitting something out. There were bitemarks in her bar of soap. 

Anger bubbled up. That soap was limited edition and probably worth more than anything the talking bat had ever touched. “Fine! I’ll get you food if you stop eating my stuff. Stay here. Do not touch anything. I will be right back.”

The kwami perked its head up. “Camembert, pretty please.” 

Not visibly acknowledging the kwami’s words, Chloé slipped on her shoes and stormed out of her room. 

Less than ten minutes later, she was back with a wheel of camembert cheese from the restaurant kitchen. 

Opening her door, Chloé found her room to be not as trashed as she imagined it would.

Since Chloé kept her room relatively free from clutter, there wasn’t much to make a mess of in the first place. Her pillows were disheveled and a number of open magazines and books had made their way to the floor. Plagg was picking petals off of roses in a vase.

“You talk,” Chloé started, pulling the plate away when Plagg tried to fly to it, “and then you get the cheese.”

“Torture,” Plagg mumbled, before agreeing to her terms. “Like I said, I’m a kwami. A god that grants powers. Yours is the power of destruction Usually when a miraculous is activated, it’s because there’s a big problem that needs to be fixed.”

More to itself it added, “Wonder what the old man was thinking with this one.” To Chloé, it asked if she’d seen anything unusual around. 

Chloé narrowed her eyes. “There’s some kind of commotion going on outside. Did you do that?” 

“Nah, the Black Cat miraculous hasn’t been activated in a while. Can't have been me. But the miraculouses are usually activated to deal with trouble, so it’s your job to check it out.”

“Miraculous?” Asked Chloé. “You’ve said it a bunch of times now. What’s a miraculous? And what’d you mean when you said it’s my job to check out the trouble?”

Plagg flew over to the other side of the room.

Chloé called after him.“Hey wait a minute! We weren’t done talking.” 

Instead of flying out a window and disappearing as she had expected, Plagg landed on her bed, where Chloé had dropped the hexagon box in surprise earlier. It picked up something from inside the box and held it out for Chloé to see.

In Plagg’s hand was a chunky silver ring, though on the kwami it was big enough to be a necklace. That is, if Plagg could fit it over its large, bulbous head. 

“Ta da,” it said, in maybe the most unenthusiastic way possible. “This is a miraculous. Your miraculous, apparently.”

Chloé examined the ring with a critical eye. It looked like real silver. She had to give it credit for being well made too, even if it was far from the type of jewelry she’d normally wear. She took it from Plagg and slid it onto a finger on her left hand. She could have sworn it looked too big for her dainty fingers a minute ago, but now it fit as well as Cinderella’s glass slipper. She chalked it up to fatigue. It had been a very long day already.

All in all, the ring seemed normal. Nothing she’d expect a supposed power-granting god to have.

“What’s so special about the ring?” Chloé asked.

“Well,” said Plagg, “if you have it on and you say ‘Claws out’—”

“Claws out?” Chloé interrupted. “What kind of—”

She didn’t have a chance to finish her sentence. 

Plagg flew to her ring at immerurable speeds and somehow was… absorbed into it, the ring glowing upon contact. The ring shined for a few second before turning black with a green paw print design, but that wasn’t the weirdest part. A tingling sensation passed from the right side of her face to the left. It subsided after a moment, but the same sensation started in her chest, right where her heart was, and spread to her arms, to her stomach, all the way to her feet. The ordeal was over as fast as it had began. 

“Plagg, what was that?” Chloé screeched. 

But Plagg was nowhere to be found. After all, he did get sucked into the ring. The ring which was now on a gloved hand instead of a bare one. Chloé was so going to have words with him later.

Chloé ran to the bathroom mirror and screamed for the who-knows-how-many-eth time that day.

Her designer clothes had been replaced with an all black catsuit made of what seemed to be leather. Looking closely at her gloves, she could see that the fabric was comprised of small interlocking hexagons. She wouldn’t consider herself to be a fabrics expert, but she’d definitely never seen anything like this. Even her shoes had been changed. She was now wearing combat boots or something similar. And to top it all off, there was a bell as a zipper. An honest-to-God bell. 

However strange the costume was—because that’s only what the thing could be, a costume—what shocked her most were her eyes. In addition to being surrounded by a black domino mask, the whites of her eyes were not white. They were blue. Completely blue. A shade of blue slightly lighter than her regular eye color, which was the only reason she could differentiate between her sclera and her pupil. 

Chloé was unable to look away. The sight was so horrible—so terrifying—that it was captivating, like a car crash. She could see the thin veins at the corners of her eyes, purple instead of red. Every fibre of her being screamed that this was unnatural.

What happened to her?

She reached up to poke her eye to make sure someone hadn’t slipped contacts on her. She didn’t feel like she had contacts on, though she supposed she wouldn’t know what contact lenses felt like. Chloé had never worn contacts or needed glasses in general. That was Sabrina’s department.

When Sabrina had gotten her glasses in fourth grade, Chloé had asked if she could wear contacts instead. Chloé didn’t want it to look like she was associating with a nerdy kid. The following days, Sabrina was out of school. She’d had an allergic reaction to the contact lenses. So Chloé learned to tolerate a pair of glasses following her around. She’d be hard-pressed trying to find someone else willing to do her homework.

Chloé decided against putting her hand near her eye when she noticed the sharp points of her gloved fingers, a mimicry of a cat’s claws. Her arm stopped right next to her ear, lightly touching some stray blond hair. Chloé’s attention was brought to the top of her head. Her pristine high ponytail was now looser, locs of hair that had fallen out framing her face. 

And she was wearing fake cat ears. Because at this point, why not. The universe had discovered her deep dislike of puns. The catsuit she was wearing was a literal cat suit. 

With the mask and one-piece suit, the costume as a whole looked like it had jumped out of one of Sabrina’s old school hero comic books. 

Tears threatened to overflow from Chloé’s (blueblueblue) eyes, but she held them in. Why was she crying? She was the princess of Paris. Not even this inconvenience could stop her reign. 

But despite what she told herself, she still slid to the marble floor with her back against the kitchen counter, distraught and powerless.

.  
.  
.

Some time later, Chloé heard knocking from her spot curled up on the floor. Jean-whatever was at the door, telling her that her father was home and wanted to make sure she got home from school okay. 

Chloé was prepared to ignore Jean-whatever and his horrendous timing when she remembered that she left her door unlocked. 

Her heart skipped a beat. Nobody could see her like this! She was wearing a leather catsuit, of all things, and her eyes were all freaky and weird! The degree to which this would ruin her reputation if word got out was immeasurable. 

She needed to hide.

In her haste, she only had a few seconds to check the mirror to make sure her face wasn’t red from almost bursting into tears before she left the bathroom.

It wasn’t. At least she had one thing going for her. 

Chloé heard the door handle turning. She frantically dashed to the middle of her room, searching for anywhere that she could hide.

She loved her open-floor plan, but it really wasn’t helping right now.

For lack of better options, Chloé sprinted out onto her balcony. Unfortunately, the balcony was relatively free of furniture and therefore free of hiding spots.

Why didn’t she lock herself in her bathroom when she had the chance? Where could she hide out here?

As if it could read her mind, the shiny silver cylinder in her hands—which had previously been stuck to the back of her suit somehow—extended, taking her with it.

The balcony suddenly got a lot smaller as she was hoisted many feet up. The rush of air whipped her face as she was carried over to the neighboring building. 

Then, the baton shrunk in her hands until it was a foot long, the same size it had been before.

Chloé stared at the balcony of Le Grand Paris, where she was standing mere seconds ago. Robotically, she looked at the baton in her hand and then back to the balcony.

_What just happened?_

The seconds ticked by and the pieces slowly started clicking into place in her mind. 

She was about to start panicking when a red figure came swooping in, landing gracefully on the roof in a crouch. 

The figure, now identified to be a girl in a red, skin tight costume, stood up.

“Hi,” the girl said. “I’m Ladybug.”


	2. Chapter 2

Head tilted, Sabrina stared at the blatant defiance of the laws of physics in front of her. 

The red bug that had appeared in her room in a show of light—Tikki the kwami, she had introduced herself as—was in the middle of explaining how Sabrina was chosen to protect Paris. 

She was also hovering in mid air, despite there being no possible way she would be able to so.

No wings, no propellers, nothing.

“Every so often,” Tikki said, “this miraculous is given to someone who’s duty becomes to help people. You’re the only one who can stop Stoneheart, that monster out there.” 

Tikki gestured to the strange box Sabrina had found sitting on her desk when she entered her room. “In this box are your miraculous.”

The box was made out of wood, but intertwined with the wood grain were streaks of a sharp red the same color as the pattern on the lid. At first, Sabrina had thought the odd box was a gift from her dad, but the absence of a note beside it was the most damning evidence against that theory. 

The father and daughter had developed a system of leaving notes for each other over the years. Since Sabrina’s father had long work days at the police station, the two often just missed seeing each other in the mornings and afternoons. Sabrina’s dad would tack a note to the fridge with a magnet in the morning wishing her a good day at school if he left for work before Sabrina woke up or would leave one on the kitchen table if he was going to not be home when Sabrina returned from school. Whenever her dad bought her books, there would always be a slip of paper in the inside cover to cheer her up. 

Sabrina fought to ward away the concern and uneasiness that arose at the though of her father. From what she saw on the news broadcast when she got home, he was already injured and the stone monster on the live video didn’t seem to be slowing down. She hoped he’d get home okay by the end of the day. 

When Sabrina was younger, she’d assumed her dad was invincible. He was a policeman. He locked up bad guys and found lost pets. She’d though nothing could hurt him. Now, years later, she understood the hazards of being a police officer. Most of the time, it was just handing out parking tickets, sometimes–times like today–she would wait anxiously for the end of her dad’s shift at work. 

Tikki continued her explanation. “The earrings give you some abilities that make it easier to fight evil. You could consider using a miraculous to being like a superhero, if that makes it easier to understand.”

Only concern about her father’s well being prevented Sabrina from going into complete shock.

Superheroes were real. Some kind of magic was real. 

In école, Sabrina had dreamed of being a hero just like the ones from the comic books her dad gave her. Who didn’t want to be someone strong enough to fight their own battles?

Her daydreams of being a superhero faded as she got older. Chloé chose Sabrina to be her friend and then there was no need to stand up to those who teased her. Chloé’s intimidating aura extended to protect Sabrina; no one dared go near her if she was hanging out with Chloé.

Sabrina could never repay the debt she owed to Chloé. If Chloé hadn’t taken her as a friend, no one would’ve. To show her appreciation, Sabrina complied with Chloé’s requests for her to do Chloé’s homework, even doing it out of her own volition on occasion. 

When collége came around, superheroes were the last thing on Sabrina’s mind.

But if this once upon a time wish-come-true was real, here was an opportunity for Sabrina to help people like her dad does every day and to help her dad go up against the thing that had already given him a broken arm.

“Yeah,” Sabrina said. “Yeah that does.”

Sabrina plucked the earrings out of the box. The earrings were unassuming flat, black studs. She looked back at the kwami

“So,” Sabrina started, “what am I going up against? What exactly is Stoneheart?” From the TV, she knew what the rock creature looked like, but didn’t know what she was supposed to do about it.

“Stoneheart many appear to be a monster, but he’s actually a regular person who has been akumatized. Akumas are the things that infect an object that a person has, giving them powers. You have to find and destroy the infected object.” Tikki said in response. “A second miraculous is also going to be activated, so you won’t have to save the city on your own.”

Sabrina noded and asked a few more clarifying questions. For some, Tikki had answers. For others, she was just as clueless as Sabrina.

Finally, armed with all the information she needed (or thought she needed), Sabrina put on the earrings.

“Okay, I’m ready. Tikki, spots on!”

Tikki flashed an encouraging smile before disappearing. 

Pink light blanketed Sabrina, starting at her torso and continuing outward. She shivered. It felt like pins and needles crawling over her body. Once she was completely covered in the pink light, it dissolved to reveal bright red fabric, a black spot the size of her fist here and there. The red costume went from her neck all the way down to her feet, and she was acutely aware of something on her face around her eyes. 

The skin tight aspect of the suit was (a lot) more revealing that she would have liked, but she supposed it was better than some of the costumes in her comic books. 

Sabrina caught her reflection in a picture frame propped up on her desk. Where there had been nothing before, a domino mask now lay over her eyes. Her white headband had turned red, and attached to both ends was ribbon that extended some distance behind her. 

She looked like a different person. The girl in the reflection looked confident, self assured, like a real superhero. 

The girl in her reflection was a stranger.

Sabrina quickly looked away. She had a city—and a father—to save. 

The problem now was finding a way out of the apartment without anyone seeing her. 

Walking to her bedroom window, she could see that the streets were clear. No pedestrians and all cars parked on the side of the road. All she had to worry about were surveillance cameras. 

She spent a minute thinking before grabbing a gray hoodie out of her closet and slipping it on. The sweatshirt went down to her waist and with the hood up, her face was concealed from view. Hopefully, to anyone watching, it’d just look like she was wearing crazy polka-dotted leggings. 

Sabrina flew down the narrow staircase. For a fleeting moment, she was glad that her father wasn’t here to see her sneak out. He would be disappointed in her. 

A pang of guilt followed, Sabrina scolding herself for indirectly wishing that her father wasn’t safe. 

She grabbed a backpack and opened the front door slowly.

The street didn’t look quite as static as it did from her window. She could see silhouettes of people walking past windows, peering out as if they could see Stoneheart from here. Branches rustled in the wind.

Sabrina wondered what it was like on blocks farther away from where Stoneheart was first sighted. Were they too staying inside, fearing the stone monster? Or were they carrying along per usual, not caring about problems that seemed to be a world away?

Sabrina didn’t have time to dwell on that. She was given a job, and she needed to complete it. 

She made her way to the alley next to her apartment stealthily, or what she hoped was considered stealthy. There, she took off the sweatshirt and stuffed it into her backpack, revealing her costume in all of its glory. 

Instinctually, Sabrina reached up to adjust her glasses—a nervous habit—but found nothing on her face besides her mask. 

(And how exciting was that—she had a mask like a real superhero.)

Sabrina took a second to marvel at how she could differentiate between the bricks at the other end of the alley without her glasses. At age nine, she was diagnosed as nearsighted and had to wear a pair ever since. 

Tracing it with her fingers, she realized that the mask she was wearing was the same exact shape as her glasses frames were. Perhaps that was what was giving her clearer sight.

Magic probably didn’t have to obey science. Paris was in danger, and she had to save it.

Instead, she turned her attention to a detail she hadn’t noticed before—her weapon-thingy. 

Attached to a string around her waist was what amounted to a ladybug-patterned yoyo. Examining it, Sabrina swung they yoyo forwards, not knowing what else to do with it. How could a yoyo be useful? 

To her surprise, the yoyo string seemed to be neverending, extending over the building across the street and out of view. Then, the string grew taut. It must have caught on something. 

Sabrina gave it a sharp tug and it pulled her up like a grappling hook. In a matter of seconds, Sabrina was on top of a several story building, her feet firmly planted to the building’s gambrel roof.

The September sun was shining overhead. At this time of year, the autumn chill had just arrived. 

If Sabrina had been less focused on scanning the cityscape, she would have noticed that the seemingly light material of her costume was doing a surprisingly good job of shielding her from the cold.

But she didn’t notice, occupied instead with picking Montparnasse Tower out from Paris’ handful of skyscrapers. 

At fifty-nine stories, Montparnasse Tower was one of the tallest skyscrapers in the city as well as a tourist hotspot. The reason, however, that Sabrina was searching for it was because it was where the lady on the news had said Stoneheart was heading. 

Sabrina soon located it after a minute of trying to orient herself. The tower was just outside of Montparnasse, somewhat near the Seine.

Unclipping her spotted yoyo from her waist, Sabrina prepared to swing it again

She had to stop Stoneheart before he hurt more people, like it had hurt her father. 

.  
.  
.

After a few times of swinging it, Sabrina had gotten used to the mechanics of her yoyo. She also discovered that, somehow, she could jump over spaces between buildings as if they weren’t yards apart. 

The ability was a surprise to her, her breath catching in her throat as she ran off the edge of a building on instinct, thinking _this is it, this is where my story ends_ before landing soundly on the building across the street.

That part of her power still unnerved her. 

Gripping the yoyo, she hurled it at a tall building in front of her. 

The building flew past in a rush of black and gray shutters and the yoyo propelled her upwards. Anticipating the landing, she managed to land in a shaky crouch. Not too bad, considering that the first time, she nearly fell. 

When she raised her head, she nearly flinched when she saw there was a person already on the roof. A girl with bright blond hair, maybe about her age.

Taking in the cat costume, the fake cat ears flicking back and forth, and the blue sclera, Sabrina came to the conclusion that it was the work of magic, probably the same one that had constructed her suit. This person could only be the other miraculous holder that Tikki had told her about. 

About to speak, Sabrina hesitated. What if the other miraculous holder didn’t like her? As Sabrina considered this, the silence between them became tense.

“Hi,” Sabrina blurted out. “I’m… Ladybug.” 

The English word felt clunky in her mouth, but as a title, it felt right for her. It was the theme of her costume, after all. 

Sabrina paused, waiting for the other girl to introduce herself. No introduction came. Maybe the she was shy. Sabrina stuck on a smile, hoping to seem friendly and inviting. “Are you the partner my kwami told me about?”

“Um… yeah.” The other girl stood up straighter, crossing her arms. “Of course I am. And because you know oh-so-much, I’ll follow your lead, but just this once.”

“Okay then! We need to catch up with Stoneheart, who’s heading near Montparnasse Tower. Once we get there, we need to break the akumatized object.”

“Uh huh. Sounds like a plan.” The other girl was a little too hasty to answer. Sabrina thought to bring it up, but decided that it might make her feel uncomfortable. She didn’t want the other girl to dislike her after they had only talked for a few minutes. 

She got out her yoyo and threw it, tugging it to make sure it was secure. She looked at the girl one last time. “Are you coming?”

The other girl, as if startled at being addressed, snapped her head up. “Yeah. Sure.”

With a final nod, Sabrina was soaring through the air again. 

.  
.  
.

Although she didn’t particularly like her, Chloé was glad that Ladybug seemed to know what she was doing, because Chloé sure didn’t.

“Ladybug”, in her know-it-all manner, had swooped in and explained a few things before taking off, leaving Chloé with more questions than answers.

What, was Ladybug’s time too precious to spend filling her in on what the heck was going on?

Un-be-lievable.

But hey, some explanation was better than no explanation. At least she had someone who was stuck in the same boat as her.

All she had to do now was catch up with Ladybug, maybe demand some answers.

Chloé eyed the silver baton in her hand. Holding it vertically, she focused and silently commanded it to extend. 

Like before, the baton obeyed, carrying her over to the next building.

“Hey!” she yelled, breaking into a sprint. Ladybug was far ahead of her, a red shape in the distance getting smaller and smaller. “Wait. For. Me!”

Chloé didn’t like running. She most certainly didn’t like running on slanted roofs that she could easily slip off of with one single misstep. 

She should just sit down here and now, throw a fit and order Ladybug to tell her what in the world was going on. 

She would have, if she wasn’t wearing the weird cat suit.

Out of the costume, everyone knew who she was. Everyone loved her. How could they not? She was Chloé Bourgeois, daughter of the mayor and she always got her way. 

In the costume, she was a no one. A lunatic with a tail, for all anyone knew. There was no guarantee that anyone would listen to her like this.

And there was no way that she was risking a single person linking the mutated cat-person she was now with the flawless Chloé.

She needed a way to get the costume off. If this was the only way, so be it.

Although after a while, Chloé was close to snapping. The only thing preventing her from doing so was that she never seemed to get out of breath—on the verge of it, if anything—but she could always keep going. 

Did improved stamina come with the suit? Chloé would have prefered a new bottle of perfume.

At last, Ladybug stopped.

The girls stood overlooking a street that almost looked like all the other ones that had passed. Pedestrian-free with a smattering of small boutiques and cafes. The difference was that this one had a hulking stone figure strolling down it. 

Chloé glared at Ladybug. Why were they going towards the danger?

Ladybug didn’t notice Chloé shooting daggers at her. The red superhero was surveying the situation, mumbling under her breath.

“Okay,” Ladybug said. “Let’s do this.” Her words reeked of thinly veiled uncertainty.

Chloé nodded. Her plan was to stay as far away from the stone monster as possible.

“The kwami told me that Stoneheart should have an object somewhere on him that we need to get. I can’t really see anything from here. I’m thinking maybe it’s under some of the rocks that make up his body, but I’d need to get a closer look.”

Only half-listening, Chloé nodded again.

“So I’ll try to knock him down, and then we can look for the akuma,” Ladybug concluded. 

“You might want to enact that plan of yours soon,” Chloé said with a smirk. “Stoneheart’s almost gone.”

In the time that Ladybug had been thinking, Stoneheart had lumbered to the end of the road, now standing before an intersection.

Ladybug winced, a tiny movement that took over her whole composure. Taking a deep breath, she grabbed her yoyo from her waist and started off towards Stoneheart.

Chloé followed automatically, but halted when she realized she was halfway there. She was perfectly fine watching this fight from a distance.

Gathering speed, Ladybug sprinted across the tops of buildings. Her yoyo spun in her hand, flying out towards Stoneheart as she sprung off the building.

The yoyo hit Stoneheart in the side of the head, falling limp on impact, as Ladybug landed on the ground in front of him. 

Despite Ladybug’s best efforts, the attack did the opposite of its intended effect. It antagonized the monster, making him swat at the building Ladybug had jumped off. His closed fist gouged into the limestone, leaving a deep scar along the front of it.

However, what was worse was how Stoneheart seemed to physically grow, in mass, in bulk, in strength.

Chloé did not envy her ‘partner’ in the slightest.

Ladybug frowned—at least, it looked like a frown from Chloé’s angle—and put some distance between her and the growing stone monster.

Furious, Stoneheart started picking things up and hurling them at Ladybug, which she managed to barely avoid. A car, a lamp post, a café table headed straight for Chloé– 

Squeezing her eyes shut, Chloé sent up a prayer.

Now Chloé wasn’t the kind of person that prayed. She had the power to get anything she wanted, so why did she need to ask an invisible being for it?

She used to go to church sometimes. She’d dress up on Sundays and go to Mass and sit in the pews quietly like a good girl.

Her mother was the one who took her, holding Chloé’s hand the whole time with her own gloved one.

Chloé didn’t pray anymore.

Today she did though, sending up thoughts of _oh God help me, I don’t want to die, I’m too young to die, and too fabulous, please._

God must have sent an angel, because when Chloé cracked open her eyes, she wasn’t dead. Someone stood in front of her, almost glowing with light.

It took a few seconds, but Chloé’s eyes adjusted to the bright daylight. The angel wore red and black and had a mane of orange hair. Her savior was Ladybug. 

Woah. 

Forget about XY, Ladybug was now her new idol. 

Ladybug stepped away casually, as if she hadn’t just saved Chloé’s life. The table was lying next to them on its side, Ladybug’s yoyo wrapped around it.

“Are you okay?”

Her heart still pounding in her chest, it took Chloé a moment to process her words. Ladybug was asking how she was!

“Um, yeah. Definitely,” she said.

“That’s good,” Ladybug replied. She opened her mouth as if to say something more, but closed it and wrinkled her brow instead. After a moment, she went back to the fight.

Ladybug jumped down to the street, landing right in front of Stoneheart.

“Why are you causing so much destruction in Paris?” Ladybug asked, standing tall in the shadow of the huge monster.

Stoneheart made a rumbling noise. “Because of Kim. Bring him to me!”

Chloé roller her eyes. Kim? He should have been more specific. There were probably a lot of Kims in Paris. No one would want to accidentally get the annoying Kim from her class when looking for revenge.

It sounded like Ladybug agreed with her. “I’m not sure who you’re referring to,” said Ladybug, “but I’m–we’re not letting you hurt anyone else.”

Chloé looked down at Ladybug in awe. 

How cool was that? Ladybug was really a real-life superhero.

.  
.  
.

Sabrina twisted in the air, sending her yoyo flying at Stoneheart again.

She didn’t think it was possible, but he seemed even more mad now after having his request denied.

The yoyo hit his side and just like before, Stoneheart grew bigger, reaching more than halfway up the four-story buildings that lined the road.

Stoneheart tried to grab the yoyo with his left hand, but Sabrina pulled on the string just in time. He growled again when he ended up swiping clean through the air.

His arm fell, fist smashing into the paved street. Crumbling under its force, the asphalt shattered, sending small shards of concrete through the air. 

Sabrina leapt backwards and spun her yoyo in a circle to deflect the incoming bits of pavement. She narrowed her eyes, an idea forming in her mind.

“You can do it, Ladybug!” a voice called from above. Her partner was cheering her on from a safe spot four stories up. 

A sharp spike of annoyance rose up. Her partner was helping as much as Chloé did on group projects. 

But with those group projects, Sabrina was fine on her own. She was smart and knew how to ace most assignments. Chloé knew this, of course, and so she chose to let Sabrina do what she thought would be best. 

This was not like one of those situations. Sabrina was new to this. She didn’t have a foolproof plan for success. 

And there was a lot more at stake here. 

She swung her yoyo up to the building that her partner was on, tugging its string to pull her up. She landed in front of the blonde, who seemed to perk up when she saw her. 

“Oh em gee! That was so cool!” Cat Girl (hey, Sabrina needed _something_ to call her) spread her arms and tried to hug Sabrina. 

Sabrina’s patience was at the end of its rope. She spun her yoyo to form a barrier between her and Cat Girl. 

Cat Girl responded with a pout, the cat ears atop her head drooping. 

“Please, can you help me come up with a way to defeat the akuma?” Sabrina asked. It wasn’t really a question.

“Yeah, totally.” Her partner seemed oblivious to the bite behind Sabrina’s words.

Sabrina took a deep breath. “Physical attacks don’t work. They just make Stoneheart stronger. So there goes Plan A. I’m thinking that we’re going to have to use our special powers. My kwami told be they were a last resort, but…” she trailed off.

Looking down to the street, she saw Stoneheart searching for more things to throw. “…I don’t think we have much of a choice.”

“Powers?” Cat Girl exclaimed. “We have powers?”

“Yes,” Sabrina said through gritted teeth. “The miraculouses do more than just dress us up.” Turning away from her partner, she called on her power with a shout of “Lucky Charm!”

A swirl of pink, then a red and black-spotted object fell into her hands. 

“A… tape recorder?” Sabrina wondered aloud. “I’m not sure how this is going to help.” 

She’d never even seen one in real life, just heard of them in passing from her deceased grandfather. The cosmic entities that be decided that this would aid their situation, so Sabrina didn’t press it.

She closed her hand tightly around the tape recorder. “But our new plan needs to include getting Stoneheart’s fist open. See there, his right fist is closed. He’s never opened it. The akumatized object’s there, not under the rocks that make up his body.”

“Ladybug,” Sabrina’s partner said, “what can I do?”

Finally. The question Sabrina had been waiting for.

“You have a power too. It’s called Cataclysm, if I remember right. Say that and it will activate. I need time to think of some way to stop Stoneheart.”

“Cataclysm,” her partner said loudly, the last syllable lilting upwards as if it was a question. 

Cat Girl frowned at her clawed hand, which now looked like it was sucking up all the light around it to form a black, swirling vortex. “What does it do?”

“I don’t know,” Sabrina said. She was fiddling with the tape recorder. She only looked up when a second later, she heard a crunching noise followed by a car siren.

Sabrina grabbed her yoyo, but there was nothing she could do to prevent the car from crashing into them. She made to jump away, when all of the sudden the car crumbled.

Literally crumbled–steel and aluminum and glass breaking or rusting until all that was left was debris that looked like it had survived nuclear fallout. 

Cat Girl stood at the foot of the debris, eyes wide and hand held out in front of her. 

“What the heck?” she screeched. “I almost _died!_ ” She glanced around as if there was anyone to hear her but upon seeing Ladybug, her distressed expression vanished into thin air. “I didn’t though. Look, I saved both of us.”

“Yeah,” Sabrina replied. “Thanks.” She surprised herself by actually meaning it. 

“It was all my pleasure.”

Cat Girl went on to talk about something else, but Sabrina tuned it out. 

The gears in her head whirred. Only five minutes until they transformed back. 

The tape recorder—her yoyo—Cat Girl’s baton—Stoneheart— 

Sabrina had a plan.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfic, so I don't really know what I'm doing. Any criticism is welcome, constructive or otherwise. (And praise, too, if you find this deserving of it.)
> 
> Updates on this will be sporadic, as life is unpredictable.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!


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